Landscape Districts along the “Via Francigena in the South”: the Monti Lepini area

Nowadays the cultural attraction and the power of tourist routes in local development have available evidence. The Great cultural routes of the Council of Europe are particularly important for their high value in cultural, religious, environmental and landscape fields. The “Vie Francigene” are included among these. In Italy, the measures and the specific actions taken with regard to the "vie Francigene" are however remained so far isolated and still fail to guide, towards coherent strategies of trans-municipal scale, the regional policies of Authorities concerned. Relating to territorial research, one of the most interesting topics is precisely the identification of the "area of relevance" of a single "cultural asset". This issue directly refers to the concept of landscape and involves a particular attention to territorial cultural identity issues as well as to the assets of the "Minor Heritage". The paper presents a method aimed to identify the boundaries of these "areas of relevance". This method, inherently interdisciplinary is based on the study of tangible and non-tangible features of landscape. In particular, the idea of "landscape district”, regarded as "an area presenting «not conjunctural» coherent features which are useful to identify Communities and Territories that share same issues and potentials", is applied. The method is presented through its implementation in a design exploration (operational projects).